In a brochure designed to provide “practical guidelines for librarians and library trustees” in offering online services to children, the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science has come out in support of local communities developing their own Internet policies, rather than federal mandates. “Libraries are the level of government closest to the people,” NCLIS Executive Director Robert Willard told the CNet online news service. “It is not appropriate for the federal government to step in.”
Kids and the Internet: The Promise and the Perils does not recommend the use of filtering software, although it is mentioned as one means of protecting children, along with such measures as requiring parental permission for access, separate terminals for adults and children, privacy screens or recessed monitors, and library home pages pointing to preselected sites.
The publication is a followup to a hearing held by the commission last November. NCLIS plans to publish a full report on the hearing later this year.
Posted February 22, 1999.